This morning, I read a TechCrunch article announcing a new e-bike subscription service called Dance that was founded by the founders of Soundcloud. The company is based in Europe, and the service will first launch in Berlin. When I read the article, the thing that caught my attention immediately is the company is using the Dance.CO domain name.
What I did not recall when I read the article is that Mike Mann recently announced that he sold Dance.CO for $58,000 in a July 14th tweet:
10 years ago in June, the late and great Lonnie Borck kicked off the launch of the .CO extension by purchasing e.CO at a charity auction for $81,000. Lonnie didn’t know about the auction until the morning of the event, but he drove to New York City to get together for dinner and ended up winning the domain name and supporting one of his favorite organizations. I remember that day like it was yesterday. Lonnie eventually sold e.CO for an undisclosed amount.
The .CO extension officially launched a month after the auction of e.CO, and the registry is celebrating its ten year birthday this month. Over the years, many startups have used and embraced .CO domain names, and the extension has taken off.
Vito was following the VideoGames.CO auction on Sav.com today, and it closed at $999. Whois records show that VideoGames.CO was created 11 days ago. I assume this is some sort of pending delete auction, although I am not familiar with the auction platform. There were 25 bids from 7 bidders in the auction:
Someone just got a helluva steal in a Dot Co Domain auction I just watched.https://t.co/cVod46Zdeb just sold at only $999!@NameBio reports highest 100 #DotCo DN sales past 2 yrs from 5k up to 85k
I’m not a DotCo investor but Wow, Congrats!#Domains #DomainNames #VideoGames pic.twitter.com/uzHd9gHQW9
— Vito (@VitoDotTV) May 21, 2020
The hot new app being talked about quite a bit in tech circles and on Twitter this weekend is called Byte. Billed by some news outlets as a “successor” to Vine, Byte is a six second short video app that was created by Dom Hofmann, the co-founder of Vine. Interestingly, Byte can be found on the Byte.CO domain name, exactly like Vine was found on another .CO domain name, Vine.CO. Vine was shut down in 2016.
There are many startups that use .CO domain names, and Neustar has been active in highlighting and promoting these companies and businesses. I received an email from a representative from Neustar to let me know the .CO Registry is supporting the registrants who use .CO domain names during Global Entrepreneurship Week (GEW), which began yesterday and runs through November 24.
The company will be kicking off a marketing campaign to help promote the registry and its users. Here’s what I was told about how Neustar and the .CO Registry team will be promoting .CO and the companies that use .CO domain names:
Chris Zuiker is the Head of Sales and Marketing at Media Options, the domain name brokerage founded by Andrew Rosener. Chris has a video series where he offers opinions about buying and selling domain names, and I tune in when I see a video that looks like it will be interesting.
This morning, I saw that he posted a video via LinkedIn with the caption, “Please do not use this domain extension.” I will let you watch the video to hear which extension he is referencing, but I was a bit surprised given the popularity and growth of this particular extension. In fact, there have been quite a few large sales in the extension, and I would imagine it is one of the top .com alternatives for startups.
After watching the video, which I embedded below via the LinkedIn post, you are welcome to share your comments here or directly within his post:
